Business Confidence Up 5.5% in Third Quarter July 11th, 2013 The Harmonised Business Confidence Indicator (ICEA), published this week by the National Statistics Institute, has risen by 5.5% in the third quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter. The upturn in business confidence in the third quarter, the second consecutive rise after the 3.6% increase recorded in the previous quarter, is due to positive progress on the balance of expectations (the difference between the optimistic and pessimistic views of businesses) which improved by more than five points to stand at -33.1 points. 10.9% of business managers surveyed by the National Statistics Institute believe that the progress of their business will be favourable in the third quarter, while 44% think it will be unfavourable, and 45.1% believe it will be normal. Business confidence improved in all regions during the third quarter, in all sectors and in all sizes of company. According to the Institute’s data, all five economic sectors analysed in this quarter experienced improvements in confidence. The transportation and hospitality sector registered the largest increase (+8.3%), followed by trade (+7.6%), industry (+6.5%), construction (+3.8%) and other services (+3.4%). As for the size of establishment, El Mundo reported that business confidence also improved in all of them. The largest increase was registered for businesses with between 10 and 49 employees, with a rise of 6.1%, followed by companies with 50 to 199 employees (+6%), those with less than ten employees (+5.6%), those with 200 to 999 employees (+5.3%) and those with more than 1,000 employees (+0.5%). Business confidence improved in all regions in the third quarter, compared to the previous quarter. The largest increases were registered for the Balearic Islands (+10.1%), Extremadura (+9.8%) and La Rioja (+8.2%), while more moderate improvements were recorded for the Canary Islands (+0.8%), the Basque Country (+1%) and Cantabria (+1.8%).
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 14:58:51 +0000